


Melodrama

by reversedandremanded



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Armie Hammer - Freeform, Call me by your name, Lorde - Freeform, M/M, Melodrama, Timothee Chalamet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:10:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reversedandremanded/pseuds/reversedandremanded
Summary: Lorde's second studio album, Melodrama, serves as an overarching narrative guide for Armie and Timmy





	1. Green Light

**Author's Note:**

> This is an album composed exclusively of bangers. Yes, some are sad bangers, but they are bangers nonetheless. Also, this is a perfect Summer Love™ album. 
> 
> You'll get more out of the story if you listen to the associated song first but I've tried to write it so that you don't need to have familiarity with the song or album to enjoy it. I'll post each song on the album, in order, as a separate chapter. 
> 
> Check me out on tumblr (is-this-loss)

**I know about what you did and I want to scream the truth**

**She thinks you love the beach, you’re such a damn liar**

Sometimes Armie lies about how he spends his time after work in Crema. He’s been spending a bit more time with his co-star than he normally does on set. Just watching Mike Tyson documentaries and talking about shooting, but the time is starting to add up. Timmy tries to convince himself that all this time spent together feels secretive, like they’re hiding something. He knows he’s starting to develop strong feelings for Armie and is afraid of what it means; he wants to hate Armie so that he can force these feelings to go away. 

**Thought you said that you would always be in love**

**But you're not in love no more**

**Did it frighten you**

**How we kissed when we danced on the light up floor?**

**On the light up floor**

After Timmy and Armie have to kiss for the first time in rehearsal, Timmy feels more confident that Armie might be feeling something too. Armie has started to catch his eyes in a way he hadn’t before. Their arms seem to brush more frequently when they pass each other than they used to. He has dropped the impersonal “bud” in favor of a much more personal “Timmy”. Despite his best efforts to push the thoughts out of his mind, Armie begins to question if his feelings for Liz. It didn’t feel as electrically charged with her, not even when they first toyed with the idea of getting together. If this is what it really feels like, what is it that he feels for Liz? Timmy had started cracks in the perfectly curated and facaded life Armie had spent years building for himself. 

**But I hear sounds in my mind**

**Brand new sounds in my mind**

**But honey I'll be seein' you, ever, I go**

**But honey I'll be seein' you down every road**

**I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it**

Timmy is starting to feel something new, something he’s never felt for anyone before; something far beyond his numerous crushes and intense infatuations. Not only is Armie everywhere he goes (on set, after-dinner rehearsals, bike rides, the coffee shop in the morning) but also constantly in his mind’s eye; he can’t stop seeing Armie in his thoughts or dreams either. He can’t make the first move though; Armie is married. So he’s waiting for Armie to break first, to lean in a bit. He’s waiting for Armie’s subtle green light before he’s going to do anything. And god does he want it. 

**Sometimes I wake up in a different bedroom**

**I whisper things, the city sings 'em back to you**

Timmy sometimes falls asleep on the couch in Armie’s Crema apartment after late nights of talking and building emotional chemistry that will ring true on camera. Only when he wakes up in the middle of the night and Armie is also asleep on the couch, and he is about to walk back to his own place, can he say what he really feels. He whispers these things to Armie in his sleep but won’t act on them; not at night or in the light of day. He’s still waiting for Armie’s green light.


	2. Sober

By this point, Armie and Timmy kiss more than would be completely necessary for rehearsal purposes, but neither acknowledges it out loud, nor is it entirely in excess. Just enough to be able to lull themselves into still thinking of it as legitimate character research or bonding so that it plays true to an audience . It’s not quite a silent agreement on what they are; they’re both playing their hands too close to their chest. But they both recognize it’s something more than “normal”.

**Limelight**

**Lose my mind**

**Limelight**

**Lose my mind**

Timmy’s rarely the lead. Not even in his own life. But suddenly he’s often the center of attention on set. And Armie’s focus too. He doesn’t know what to do with himself and tries to get lost in Elio in an attempt to keep himself grounded and out of his own head, where he can often get stuck.

**Oh god, I'm clean out of air in my lungs**

**It's all gone**

**Played it so nonchalant**

**It's time we danced with the truth**

**Move along with the truth**

Timmy is floored by what he and Armie seem to have, but not being able to talk about it is starting to eat away at him. He needs to know where the boundaries are, how far he can take it. He tries to seem cool and unattached but now he needs to know what’s happening. He’s always been full of constant self-doubt and desperately needs to know it’s not all in his head.

**I’m acting like I don’t see every**

**Ribbon you use to tie yourself to me**

Timmy notices how Armie makes excuses to spend extra time with him. They eat meals together at points when they would understandably need time to alone to decompress after a long day, or make trips to the grocery store together to stock their separate apartment fridges. Timmy tries not to show Armie how much he notices, and how much the little things mean when added all together.

**But my hips have missed your hips**

**So let's get to know the kicks**

**Will you sway with me?**

**Go astray with me?**

During the day, while they film scenes that aren’t physically intimate, Armie and Timmy feel their bodies trying to pull together, as if by a magnetic force. When the work day is finally over, they fall back into each other’s arms. It’s been less than 24 hours but they have trouble letting go of each other. They hug and lean on each other, but never push it farther. This alone, though, feels like more than enough. Skin on skin contact is electrifying and all-consuming for both of them, even if it’s only hands or forearms. They edge, afraid to take the deeper plunge. Afraid that once they do, they’ll have crossed a rubicon, will have traversed a bridge that cannot be uncrossed. 

They each silently worry about what this will do to their on-camera lives, how it will impact their performance, but decide that it’s well worth it.

**These are the games of the weekend**

**We pretend that we just don't care**

**But we care (but what will we do when we're sober?)**

**When you dream with the fever**

**Bet you wish you could touch our rush**

**But what will we do when we're sober**

Their time together is intoxicating; the rest of the world is shut out and all that matters are the small and intricate details of each other’s bodies: the way Timmy’s breath catches when he laughs or how Armie’s eyebrows crinkle in confusion when Timmy speaks little bits of French to him. But Timmy fears what looms ahead. He is lost in the moment when he and Armie are together, but when he goes back to his own apartment, he can’t get a worry out of his head: what’s going to happen when summer is over? When they have to go back to the real world? Will they have to keep this a secret, go about under the cloak of shadows and whispers? Or is Armie just in love with the experience and the magic Luca has created for them, none of it really having to do with Timmy at all? Will he snap out of it when they leave their paradise in quiet, northern Italy? Timmy begins to worry that he’s just a convenience for Armie, that he’ll realize it was a fun summer fling, or worse, a mistake, when they sober up from their time together.

**I know you're feeling it too**

**Can we keep up with the ruse?**

Timmy is scared that Luca will notice, as he has such a finely tuned eye, especially when it comes to lust and attraction. Will they accidentally let something slip? How long can they keep the production team oblivious? Timmy began letting all he feels flash across his face so much that he’s forgotten how to hide. Will he really be able to keep his breath steady when Armie looks at him in the way that weakens his knees and twists his stomach?

**Jack and Jill got fucked up and possessive**

**When they get dark**

Late in the night, when Timmy stays over at Armie’s, he is plunged into a world he had no awareness of before. Sometimes Armie likes to expertly tie Timmy’s hands together. Sometimes Armie says things about Timmy being his, about how no one else can have him, about how he has to look away when Timmy films scenes with Esther. These moments in the dark use their strong emotional connection to fill the gaps left by the physical contact they’re still hesitant to give in to. All of it fuels a slow ache deep inside Timmy’s chest and he can’t quite put his finger on why it affects him so deeply.

**Midnight, we’re fading**

**'Till daylight, we’re jaded**

**We know that it’s over**

**In the morning, you'll be dancing with all the heartache**

**And the treason, the fantasies of leaving**

**But we know that, when it's over**

**In the morning, you'll be dancing with us**

Despite his constant attempts to live in the moment, Timmy can’t help but fast forward in his mind to when it will end. Maybe Armie has entertained the idea of leaving Liz, but he won’t really do it. Armie will allow himself to live in that fantasy world, with the confidence that he’ll be able to go after what he really wants when filming wraps, after summer. But Timmy knows that when it’s all said and done, he won’t. And from there, all they can do is promote the movie together, both shattered by the idea of what they had and what they let go. Timmy can predict the whole dance of it all, from Sundance to the Independent Spirit awards, and he knows that every new morning he lays eyes on Armie and didn’t get to sleep next to him the night before, the cracks in his heart will deepen and fracture just a little bit more.

Luca’s presence on the press tour will be but a small consolation.


	3. Homemade Dynamite

As the summer in Crema draws to a close, the connection between Armie and Timmy has grown stronger than either thought possible. They click and fit together so seamlessly and expose all the most intricate, minute, secret parts of themselves to each other. They see and are seen by the other in a way they expected to live their entire lives wanting. In all their glory, gore, splendor, and flaws, they are each truly seen.

**Don't know you super well**

**But I think that you might be the same as me**

**Behave abnormally**

There is a peculiar and frightening flame that has long burned inside Timmy and Armie’s respective chests. Both assumed it made them weird, wrong, broken. But, in their short but intense time together, starting to feel like they’d know each other all their lives, they’ve begun recognize bits of themselves in the other. This flame? They have it in common. Weird, wrong, broken, or not, they have it together.

**Our rules, our dreams, we're blind**

**Blowing shit up with homemade d-d-d-dynamite**

Their connection is too strong. Armie is certainly not known for his impulse control, and despite wearing his heart on his sleeve, Timmy tries to protect himself from pain. But he can’t help himself with Armie; the magnetism that draws them together is just too much. The universe has decided that it’s inevitable.

On the night before the final day of shooting, they finally give in to the mounting tension, desire, need. Their late night dates to watch documentaries have become more and more comfortable, the two of them slowly minimizing the distance between them on the couch each night. By now they watch with their legs tangled together between them. But there is still one line left to cross. 

Timmy wakes up in the middle of that last night on the couch in his small Crema apartment. Armie has also drifted off and it isn’t unusual for Timmy to throw a book at him or playfully kick him to wake him up so that they both get enough good quality sleep to bare their souls for the camera (and each other) the next day. But tonight, Timmy makes a different choice. He slowly and carefully removes his legs from being intertwined with Armie’s as not not wake him just yet. Instead, he kneels down, putting his face on the same level as Armie’s. With one hand on each of Armie’s shoulders, Timmy gently rocks Armie awake. “Hey,” he whispers. Armie’s eye flutter open slowly, just long enough for Timmy to marvel in their iridescent blue, before shutting again. “Mmmm” Armie gumbles, grabbing Timmy and pulling him into a hug in an attempt to pacify Timmy’s attempt at waking him up. “Arm-” Timmy sighs, trying to wiggle out of Armie’s grasp, letting a breathy giggle escape his lips.

But Armie cuts him off again with another tired groan. “Timmy, I’m too tired to walk back home. Just leave me here on the couch to throw out my back for tomorrow.”

“You can… come share the bed if you think it’ll be better for you.” Timmy tries to sound as if he means it entirely innocently, just one friend looking out for another. They’ve never made it this far before.

“If you insist” Armie says, ever nonchalant, slowly getting up as he follows Timmy into his room. The apartment is empty save for the two of them, but Armie feels the need to close the door behind them. As soon as he hears the thunk of the latch moving back in place, Timmy turns around to look at him. 

Immediately, with no words spoken, they both reach out at the same moment. Hands are everywhere. Lips are everywhere. The final boundary has been obliterated and even with their ribs crashing together it feels like they can’t get close enough. 

For once in his life, Armie finally drops all charades. The pretenses have fallen and all there is left is love and want. “This is who I am,” Armie whispers. “You are what I want.” Tonight they shatter the rules they had silently set for themselves, consequences be damned. They revel in their own recklessness, gasp and moan and thrust as they blow up the lives and people they were before Crema. Before each other. “This can’t end here” they each think to themselves as they finally drift to sleep, legs entangled once again, this time under Timmy’s covers.


End file.
